Pat Devereux

A VOICE OF REASON IN THE LAND OF THE FREE PART 3: THE HOME OF US CAR CULTURE

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IWhere does? s Detroit still the heart of car culture in the US?

Michigan, Detroit’s home state, still produces the most cars of any state in the US. So, if that were the only metric that mattered, you’d have to say yes, it is.

You don’t sound convinced.

I’m not. It might have been 50 years ago, but the location of a factory doesn’t determine a product’s cultural centre these days. If it did, Apple’s home would be in Shenzhen, China, where the white goods are made, not super-cool Cupertino where they are dreamt up and designed.

OK, so what’s your point?

There are multiple drivers to car culture these days. Having decades of manufacturing, from the Model T to today, has given Detroit a deep and storied car history. But the city doesn’t contain all the decision-makers who will decide the success or failure of a car brand anymore. If it’s the city that has the most car sales, then it’s Los Angeles. The sheer number of cars on the road in California dwarfs every other state. Last year, there were over 23m, compared with around 5m in Michigan.

But numbers aren’t everything, are they?

Not entirely. While LA’s volume and diversity do allow for the development of new and existing car trends, there are several other places that also have a bearing on the cultures of how cars are designed, perceived and used. Like New York. Even though a car to most people in NYC is something that’s either yellow or black and comes with a driver, and car ownership is the lowest in the US at just 45 per cent of families (in LA, it’s over 83 per cent), it’s still a cultural centre for influencers of fashion, publishing, marketing, luxury and finance. All areas that deeply affect how and which cars we buy.

Do any of the carmakers have a presence there?

Cadillac recently announced that it is looking at transplanting some of its marketing functions to the Big Apple in order to access, and benefit from, being among these tastemakers – and attract staff who otherwise wouldn’t work for the brand in Detroit.

In these days of the internet, is location a big deal?

Short answer: yes. Longer answer: yes, because it makes sense to be close to the people whose tastes you are looking to learn from and influence. But only if you can keep an open channel between the relocated thinkers and the producers back at HQ. If that’s not possible, it will create divisions and fail. But you can understand

“If factory location mattered, Apple’s home would be in China”

Cadillac’s thinking: it is massive in the luxury-limo business, so being in the home of luxury makes sense.

Any other examples?

Plenty. The daddy of them all was when Ford moved its now-defunct Premier Automotive Group to Irvine, CA at the behest of its boss, Wolfgang Reitzle. That didn’t work out. But not because the thinking wasn’t right. Like most of Reitzle’s strategies, it was bang on. The problem was Ford’s philosophy changed when CEO Jacques Nasser was ousted, and all the brands got sold off.

Anywhere else important?

How about Palo Alto? As the amount of electronics in our cars skyrockets, the need to have the best electrical engineers and thinkers rises exponentially, too. That’s why all the big carmakers – including Cadillac – have offices or studios there. Not just to do research, but also to attract the best minds from the likes of Stanford University, Google, Facebook, etc. So you could call that the home of electronic car culture.

OK, so what’s the conclusion then?

That there isn’t one centre of car culture in the US anymore. For carmaking culture, it’s still Detroit, no question. For car buying and usage culture, it’s also no competition: LA wins every time. But NYC makes its own good case, as does Palo Alto. And several other places like Miami. So there isn’t one place you can get it all – you have to be in several places.